Even if you just view these issues as minor inconveniences, the inefficiencies can creep up on you and impact your global cash flow, which in turn affects your business.

Don’t let the battle become a war!Put on your armor and stand determined to reign victorious over your international payments struggles.

Battle 1 – The fight for financial informationHaving multiple banking relationships means that your transaction data will be found in multiple locations and presented in many different formats. Finding out your cash position at any one time can take hours or even days to collate, and is especially difficult if you hold bank accounts in multiple geographies. Often, by the time you finally get the information you need, it is out of date and useless for informing your cash flow decisions. The result is needlessly holding onto cash because you can’t be sure if you have enough funds in your accounts and geographies to match the payments you have to make.

Fight back!

Moving your international bank connectivity channels into your existing payments and cash management hub means you can access all your transaction data in one place. It is presented with a familiar UI and removes the need for manual downloading, printing, and collating. You’re able to have a consolidated cash position and a standardized format for your bank data without delay and you can access your international payments from wherever you are in the world. Since you can manage your work flow without an eBanking portal to retrieve data, you don’t have to provide bank account access to non-essential staff, thereby dramatically reducing your exposure to risks.

Battle 2 – The tussle with terminalsInternational payments are complicated, there’s no doubt about that. If you want to send payments to regions across the globe, it may mean multiple banking relationships, as well as an eBanking solution and security device for every connection. That’s a lot of IT, training and staff overhead for a system which gives you information at a snail’s pace.

Fight back!

By using a payments hub for your international and domestic payments, you have a single platform for all your bank connections, eliminating the need for multiple eBanking solutions and security tokens. Since the hub provides a consistent user interface for all banks, training costs and error risks are dramatically reduced, giving you time to focus on the activities that are of top priority for your business.

Battle 3 – The duel with data entryMany businesses rely on manual entry of data when it comes to sending international payments. Data entry can be long-winded in the best of times, but when you factor in differing eBanking requirements, countless file formats and limitations over file uploads, the process of making payments becomes even more insufferable. Typing meaningless streams of numbers is a one-way ticket to human error, and payment errors – typically resulting in repair fees from the bank, or worse, misdirected or missing payments.

Fight back!

Let automation be your friend – there’s no reason not to. Your payment hub can act as a transformation layer between your systems and your banks, taking the output from you, and generating the correct format for them. Whenever you need to send funds ad hoc, the hub has a single consistent UI for manual payments, mitigating against mistakes and improving control.

There’s no question that managing international payments is complicated — but it doesn’t have to be difficult.

Posted by Emily Rodenhuis

Emily Rodenhuis is Senior Editor of the Business Payments Institute, as well as a creative writer specializing in demand generation and social media. She works with businesses to focus on editorial strategy for B2B marketing and PR. Her work has been featured by BankNews, InfoSecurity, Global Treasury Briefing, AFP magazine, GT News, and Healthcare Dive.